If we cannot moan about the heat then what is the point of being British?

Heatwave.

Blaise Tapp

Published:07:05Saturday 11 July 2015

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I have long said that if there was ever to be an Olympic Games centred around the art of moaning then we would beat the French.

In actual fact we would clean up - it is likely that if they handed out medals for whingeing then we would collect more gold than the Swiss did in the 1940s. The image of us Brits maintaining a stiff upper lip at all times is as outdated as the bubble perm - we discovered our collective voice a long time ago and we use it with great aplomb.

On street corners, in the aisles of discount German supermarkets, on the top deck of the 192, even in the tanning salon we never cease to bleat on about what is giving us the goat.

Of course if there is one thing guaranteed to send a whingeing Pom into meltdown it is the weather and boy have we had plenty of that in the past week.

The usual meteorological inspired patter went from grumbles about how it was ‘greyer than last June’ to ‘I really can’t wait for it to rain’ in a matter of a few days. We really are the most contrary creatures on God’s earth and never is that characteristic more apparent than when the Mercury rises above room temperature.

Last week towns and cities were full of sweaty folk wearing faces which suggested they were to be shot at dawn. It is odd really: get a Brit onto the beaches of Benidorm then we will withstand temperatures that would fry an egg as long as we have a Sangria in one hand and a dog-eared copy of The Sun in the other.

But if the sun shines that little bit too much when we are at work or picking the nippers up from the school then we whine more than comedy revolutionary Brand does in one of his ‘presidential’ video addresses. Granted, last week was hot and even the Daily Express wasn’t that wide of the mark when it predicted a ‘killer heatwave’ but we weren’t on our own. A pal of mine went to work in the Middle East wearing his best lambswool suit when it was a scorching 47 degrees Celsius outside. Now that’s hot.

When it gets hotter than the norm over here folk think it is perfectly acceptable to strip down to their gym shorts and flip flops when they nip to the shops for four pints of semi skimmed and a packet of space rocket lollies. We take to social media to inform the world that we cannot sleep in the sweltering heat unless we are dressed as nature intended and the hashtag #toohot trends.

Pictures of folk discovering novel ways of keeping cool including a chap submerged in an ice water filled wheelie bin were largely giant grumbles masquerading as good old fashioned British whimsy.

By the end of the week a nation was on bended knee, praying to the weather Gods for a storm - that would ‘freshen things up’ claimed the amateur Wincey Willises and Ian Macaskills. When the storms duly came there was, of course, a collective tut. The real problem is that most inhabitants of these islands don’t like extremes - we do everything in moderation until it comes to moaning that is.

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